Where from?

I won the Sea Shepard’s vegan cookbook I few months ago on Lisa’s Project Vegan blog and the recipes I’ve tried so far are all thumbs up! I hope to spend a post on the book sometime soon so I can link it up to Trish’s Cook It Up — but let’s not get ahead of myself. I used local borlotti beans out of our organic CSA haul for the bean spread this past weekend. Other local and organic ingredients in this lunch are zucchini, lettuce, tomato and parsley.

On Thursday I enjoyed an office lunch with several of the Lithuanian goodies I got from my November Foodie Penpal Vita.

The box up front contains both the kūčiukai and cookie rings (yay, cookies to add carbs to my bento ;) a freeze dried strawberry and candied radishes.

The middle ‘meat & veg’ tier holds some onion-leek-garlic-pepper (yellow & green) stir-fry, slices of Healthy Planet “chicken” fillet, a fresh radish, mini Brussels’ sprouts and a skewer of sliced raja potato and gherkin, all on a bed of corn salad. I also brought a small container of tomato ketchup for the faux meat but forgot to include it in the picture.

Dessert comes last of course: apple & clementine.

I didn’t mean to cross the bento-200 line so silently… Alas, I lacked the time to post numbers 200-202 but plan to make up for that later this month!

Today we’re saying goodbye to summer, as it’s Autumnal Equinox tomorrow. But it’s also the day I said farewell to my colleagues in the Netherlands Police Museum – which doesn’t actually exist any more either now that it has merged with two other cultural heritage institutions.

On the side (not shown)
Vegan banana-walnut muffin that my friend Janny baked with some plant based butter and raspberry jelly.

My colleagues gave me a gorgeous bouquet, a lovely self-made card with the sweetest wishes and a gift card for which I’m going to purchase something awesome. Summer may be waning but I feel warm inside!

Time flies when you’re having fun! Last Tuesday it was two years ago, on June 16th 2007, that I made my first real bento! I brought a lunch for two on a 16 km hike, in my first actual bento box. Of course I decided to use this blue usagi sakura box for my anniversary bento (#54) as well!

I like to think that the dots behind the white cherry blossoms (sakura) are full moons, since in Japanese culturerabbits (usagi) are often depicted with these mochi-tsuki. I still love this bento box a lot, but I use it less than my favourite flower lunchbox because that one’s smaller. Anyway, I’m getting distracted ;)

Upper tier:

sakura muscat white chocolate

3 sesame-soy rice crackers

3 yoghurt coated (dried) apricots

3 mini plum tomatoes

basil

radish

pistachios

mix of roasted black & white sesame with a bit of walnut and nori to go on the spinach (in the other tier)

This bento is the first bento ever dear E (Mr Gnoe) has brought to work! He probably wouldn’t have done so if his colleagues weren’t on their holidays, nor if it hadn’t contained real leftover sushi — but who cares? There’s hope now! My bento was identical to his, except for the wasabi paste ;)

Top tier:

kappamaki (cucumber role) and a little wasabi paste

tamagomaki (Japanese omelet)

avocadomaki on the right (I don’t have to spell that one out, do I? ;)

mandarin candy

Bottom tier:

ginger pickles and cherry tomato

soy sauce in container

seedless grapes

Japanese rice cracker mix (that got a bit sticky because of the humidity in the box; I’ll have to figure out to prevent that because it has happened before…

I had also meant to put in some romaine lettuce next to the maki but I forgot :(

The maki rolls were very tasty, we got them at a relatively new restaurant nearby: Kyushu. I guess they will be seeing more of us over there ;) The secret of their avocado maki is wasabi mayonnaise so we must buy some of that to try out ourselves. We also had some chuka wakame salad, hand rolls (yasai temaki), tamago sushi and inari. So it’s not strange at all we had some leftovers ;)

BTW: at Kyushu they sell bento boxes for lunch! It’s the first time I’ve discovered a restaurant in Holland that does that, but unfortunately they don’t have a vegetarian variant :(